More people are opening cryptocurrency trading accounts in Brazil than traditional brokerage accounts.

A year ago, an exchange called Foxbit had roughly 100,000 registered users. Today, they have 400,000 registered users out of the estimated 1.4 million that have opened accounts with them and their three main competitors in less than two years’ time. Compare that to the roughly 600,000 who have stock brokerage accounts and it’s plain to see: Brazilians have discovered cryptocurrency. Ja 2016, Brazilians moved $160 million in and out of Bitcoin. Last year, it hit around $2.4 're̲t'anthebe millones.

“For the guys who used to hide dollars under their mattresses, now they are hiding it in Bitcoin,” says Eduardo Ferreira, head of international business development for Foxbit in London. “It’s students buying it. It’s 60-year-old bus drivers,” he says.